Well, let’s see, where did we leave off?
It has been a long time since our last blog entry. On one hand a lot has happened to us, and on the other, we are right back where we started.
The end of our season cutting rumble strips on the side of the highway ended very strangely leaving us only three days to leave the job just north of Indianapolis, run back to Minneapolis to retrieve the motor home (we lived in hotels while working), and make it back to southern West Virginia by Thanksgiving.
With record cold temperatures, fuel and air systems acted up on the RV, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle (sure did make the trip interesting though). We pulled into Pipestem, WV at Mark’s parents house just in time to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with the family.
We stayed an extra week in southern WV to help Mark’s dad cut some firewood for the winter, then we were chased further south by snow and cold temperatures. We went back to our hometown of Lucia, NC where our long-time friends Mike and Susan showed us warmth and hospitality by insisting that we set up camp in their driveway.
It was a nice visit with family and friends, but the cold temperatures and the dreary rainy conditions inspired us to build a motorcycle rack, get the bike out of storage, load up , and head further south.
Florida was the only reasonable destination. With the high price of all campgrounds in the area (being peak season) we did little more than break even at our second adventure of working the three big Daytona events.
The 24 hour Rolex, Daytona 500(speed week), and Bike Week. Second verse, same as the first…a wild 24 hour race, another rain delayed Daytona 500(complete with tornado warning), and a fun-filled bike week.
The brutal winter of 2013/2014 didn’t completely spare Florida but is was a lot nicer than most of the rest of the country, and it did inspire Mike and Susan to travel down to the Sunshine State to enjoy some of the nicer weather for a week. Having the motorcycle with us made it nice for us to travel around and see family. We enjoyed a trip to Jacksonville to see Mark’s cousin and family, then to Ponce de Leon springs to eat pancakes with Tracy’s Aunt and Uncle then to Plant City to see Mark’s other cousin and check out the Strawberry Festival, back through Orlando to visit again with Tracy’s Aunt and Uncle, we even got to see Tracy’s sister while she and Steve were in town. So glad we got to, as we recently lost Steve to cancer.
The motorcycle rack on the motor home did not make for comfortable travel, so when the weather broke, it was back north to the Carolina’s to trade out “the rack” for the trailer. Mark got a couple of weeks work in with a construction company, which earned us just enough money to pay for fuel back west.
We had a couple of job offers that didn’t really pan out, but Lake Powell/Aramark made us good concrete offers that we could act on. We never heard a peep from the rumble strip company over the off-season but maybe they will contact us soon. In the mean time, we have enjoyed Mark’s parents coming to North Carolina to see us off, and have enjoyed visits with all of the family and friends, but the west is calling our name, so away we go again…